Read my book

Saturday, April 30, 2011

Figure Drawing Resources for Beginners and Advanced Artists

Figure drawing is easily one of the most challenging yet rewarding ways to improve yourself as an artist. It can be split into three separate disciplines: life drawing, drawing from mind and drawing from reference (photo, book, etc.).

Life drawing is a form of observational drawing where you observe a three dimensional figure and translate it to two dimensions on your paper. In case you are drawing from your mind you need to tap into your knowledge and produce a convincing result based on that. Drawing from reference falls somewhere in between of these two disciplines.

In order to become a good artist it is important to master these disciplines at least to some amount. Of course this is just one opinion. I'm sure you can be a really good artist without sticking into this framework.

Each of these disciplines supports each other. As you draw from life you get to use skills earned in the two other disciplines and vice versa. It's difficult to learn life drawing without actually having some kind of a model. Fortunately it's possible to train the latter two with less effort.

I've tried to gather some pertinent resources in this post. Some of them are freely available, some are not. The list is not exhaustive. It's likely you'll have to do some research on your own. I do hope it acts as a starting point of some sort for you.

Note that given the subject it's possibly you'll run into nudes. If you get offended by this sort of thing, just move along. :)

Books and Magazines

Bridgman uses a constructive approach in his drawing. This means he uses simple primitives, such as boxes, and wedging to join them together. This simplification provides a starting point for further observations. Famous Frank Frazetta based his anatomy on Bridgman's work. The same applies to many others, Loomis included.